Tech 3

[Rubino]

Please Sir, Can I have some more?

[Mangala]

Rumor has it that a version of the wormholes may have made it to SiSi. 

I'm giving this a look now.

[Rubino]

*holds his breath*

[Mangala]

Nothing found although going back to the Jamyl Sarum superweapon storyline from FW i have found a place in T-IPZB that ties into that - and indirectly ties into the 2nd chronicle of today.

But no wormholes. A waypost result on a scan, but no wormholes.

[Mangala]

reported by CCP t0rfifrans | 2009.01.22 15:16:49 | NEW | Comments
Yes, it‘s that time of year again. Late evenings, espresso machine set to 11, kitchen staff scramble to grill what was once pretty herds of happy innocent lambs that once ran through the scenic Icelandic landscape, now faceless food for the hungry developers. Constant HD videoconferences between Atlanta, Reykjavik and Shanghai burn up precious bandwidth. The natives are restless. There‘s an expansion on the horizon.

It‘s a special feeling to walk around the offices of CCP Reykjavik these days. Glancing at screens you see new spaceships, mysterious establishments, brand new UI components, and new world maps. In the dark minds of our game developers, they are conjuring up new mechanisms and systems that allow people to cause harm to one and other and to become filthy rich and corrupt from new lucrative industry opportunities. They are also creating places and things that will cause wonder and awe as you discover them, far beyond the known universe. Apocrypha is truly a huge evolutionary step for EVE Online. I‘m eagerly looking forward to simply logging on to TQ come March 10th and playing till my eyes bleed and fingers go numb.

To bring you all of this, we at CCP took on an approach that we refer to in-house as "the cauldron." CCP has grown to become a large development house, with offices in Atlanta, Reykjavik and Shanghai. We‘ve working on all sorts of projects, both minor and major.

Signing the deal with ATARI to bring retail boxes of EVE Online into stores on March 12th could not have come at a better time. We were in the process of doing something special - a massive expansion, the most feature rich yet. We had pulled most of our good people out of other projects and task forces to throw them all in a big cauldron called EVE Development and then we stirred like crazy.

From this we‘ve built eleven teams, Scrum teams to be exact, each of which is self sufficient, has their own game designers, artists, QA people, programmers and producers. These teams are capable of tackling entire features on their own, operating like small commando units behind enemy lines, while working with the bigger group on strategy, dealing with inter-dependencies and developing optimal communication processes.

In the coming weeks, each of these teams will be writing a couple of blogs on their features and how they are developed. We hope that you will enjoy learning about them and we also look forward to seeing the feedback and discussions that will arise. Yes, all of the discussions, even the emo rage

[Rubino]

They're trying get us hooked when we're already addicts!

[Mangala]

New blog on Wormholes:

sic itur ad astra - building a new bridge to the stars
reported by CCP Whisper | 2009.01.26 12:33:24 | NEW | Comments

http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=616

"We cannot predict the new forces, powers, and discoveries that will be disclosed to us when we reach the other planets and set up new laboratories in space. They are as much beyond our vision today as fire or electricity would be beyond the imagination of a fish." - Arthur C. Clarke

 

Hello. My name is Whisper and I am here to talk to you about one part of Apocrypha, the upcoming expansion for EVE Online. I head up Team Bifröst, which includes such luminaries as CCP Casquade, CCP Bella Bee from the Software group, CCP Greyscale and CCP Abathur from Game Design and CCP PrismX from...who knows what pit of contrariness he sprung from but he's under my supervision now. So together with the rest of the team we're going to deliver unto you a feature of truly galactic proportions. This being the introduction of a brand new, glittering, shiny travelling mechanic: Wormholes.

 

First a bit of background musing. One of the criticisms that have been levied against EVE is that space is becoming crowded and that there really is no feeling of exploration. Indeed, from the very first moment you set foot in the universe of EVE, all of you have had a map at your disposal that shows you exactly where every solar system is, how to get there and what you may expect to find. You even have a newly improved autopilot who will selflessly and mindlessly guide you to your destination. And while there are still thrills to be had, there exists at the back of many of our minds the nagging knowledge that we are not the first to venture here. That the maps have been drawn, the anchorages charted, the wild hills surveyed and the paths trodden so often they're now four-lane blacktop highways with shopping malls and 24-hour burger bars along the fringes.

 

Well we are going to change that. We are going to give you uncharted, unknown places to visit via paths that shift and slide through the fabric of space. We are going to give you thousands of new solar systems which will contain new NPC's, new exploration content and new pockets of resources to exploit. You will have the chance to venture into places that promise great rewards but also bring with them great risks. We are going to establish the untamed frontier that lurks at the fringes of known space and into which brave souls bent on conquest and riches will venture with high hopes. Some will return as heroes, some will return as fresh clones spewing from the medical vats. Some may never return at all.

 

Wormholes will bring us to this new frontier, appearing all over New Eden as a result of a cataclysmic event, the nature of which we'll reveal in the coming months. These wormholes are unstable and will spawn and vanish randomly throughout the known universe. A pilot who stumbles across one of these stellar phenomena can fly through it and travel to unknown space, where there are no stargates or stations, just the unexplored void of a new solar system. And when I say "new solar system" that is exactly what I mean. It will not be moving you to instanced space but rather to one of the thousands of new solar systems we will be adding to the EVE universe.

 

The wormholes themselves will be open only for a randomly determined amount of time and can only let through a certain amount of mass before they collapse. Pilots should carefully consider the information their ship's computer gives them about a wormhole before committing to travel through it. Although there will always be a way back to known space from wormhole space, you may have to search long and hard to locate it. And in that process, you may find wormholes that lead you to even more unexplored wormhole systems, launching you on a voyage of exploration the likes of which EVE has never seen before.

 

Which begs the question of how you will find the wormholes. Well, we are in the process of revamping the entire scanner mechanic, making it faster and easier to use. A shortlist of the new scanner features is:

You will be able to drop more than one probe in a grid
Probe scan ranges can be adjusted via a drag and drop interface in the 3D map, removing the need for multiple probe types
Probes can be repositioned in the solar system map using a drag and drop interface and will warp to their specified positions
Scanning will now use triangulation to refine and improve accuracy of scan results
You can recall probes for re-use at a later point and time
The transition from ship view to 3D Solar System view to Universe Map view has been made near instant, allowing for quick switching between them
There will be two new probe types, exploration and combat. Exploration probes will not be able to locate ships and drones but will have extremely low fitting requirements, making them ideal for people who wish to hunt down wormholes and other celestial anomalies. The combat probe launcher is able to detect ships and drones but has a higher fitting requirement, making this the tool of choice for those wishing to hunt down other pilots. We are still in the process of balancing these probes and launchers and yes, we are looking into the options of how to deal with the existing probes, probe blueprints and launchers.

 

Why should you fly through these wormholes then? Well in the solar systems on the other side of the wormholes you will find new exploration sites patrolled by a brand new type of NPC. The salvage and loot drops from these NPC's and the exploration site rewards will provide you with the raw materials you will need to reverse engineer the technology that makes construction of the new Tech 3 ship modules possible. There will also be exploration sites with ore-rich asteroid belts just waiting to be found by an adventurous industry corp.

 

There is also the chance that you could stumble across a route through wormhole space that links two widely separated areas of known space and gives you a lucrative, fast trade route for as long as the wormholes stay open. Or perhaps the route leads into the backyard of your sworn enemy...at which point you may be faced with the question of what ships to send through to maximise the potential of the mass allowance the wormholes possess.

 

Wormholes will shift all the time. They will open and close and reopen at random locations throughout New Eden and thus present you with an ever-changing area of space that no-one can control all the choke-points to. While it is theoretically possible to move a control tower into wormhole space, set it up and maintain it, the logistical challenge and risks of fueling and defending a tower in a system with no permanent links to known space would be considerable. But then again the potential rewards are equally great.

One important point needs to be made: Wormhole space will not be able to be claimed as sovereign space. This is partly due to current implementation restrictions regarding how we added 46% more solar systems to EVE but mainly because we wanted to design an area of space which, while risky to travel through, is open to all players all the time. We have not forgotten about the desirability of space for colonisation, and will be looking at ways to implement that gameplay feature in the future. In fact one of my biggest challenges will be stopping PrismX from adding ten thousand systems now that he's gotten a taste of being a deity in creative mood.

 

Greyscale will be publishing a dev blog of his own where he will go into more detail about the game mechanics surrounding wormholes. I'm sure PrismX will be going wild in the comments thread about the work he's done to introduce more solar systems into EVE. I'll also be encouraging other team members to post in the comments and perhaps write dev blogs of their own about what they're working on with regards to this universe-expanding feature. And of course the other teams will be writing about their work in the very near future, so keep your eyes on the news column.

[Rubino]

Can't wait

Hoping it's gonna be on SISI soon.

[peo]

Pity they aren't conquerable.

[Rubino]

A fully expanded and rigged orca will have around 74k m3 cargo and 40k m3 corp hanger.
Should be enough for a small POS, corp hanger, ship maint array and 2 construction modules (ammo & eq), POS fuel, 4 BC's and a miner or 2.
If we take ice lasers, fittings, BPCs, etc - we should be fairly self sufficient for a week or so.
Ideally we can be in range of jumping in a Rorqual - so we would be able to have corpies JC into the system.

[Rubino]

From the ever expanding and very excited population related to the newest blog on wormholes.  A CCP post:

     

Originally by: GnulpieIt would be even more awesome if there would be an x% chance that there are only wormholes leading into wormhole space and not back to eve space! This way it would be really possible that you would end up with some space-nomanding in the (desperate) search for a way back. Very HappyVery HappyVery Happy



I'll let Greyscale answer this in more detail in his blog, but I think he's come up with a different solution in the interim that might make getting home bit more difficult from the wormholes with higher difficulty levels. So yes, it might turn into an epic trek back home.

[Caradir]

*note to self* never NEVER go through a wormhole in my main clone */ end note to self*

the more i read the more i like, a bit concerned my skilling explo and the time being wasted is lurking, but im sure theyll make me go wow and for it nmot to be an "entire" waste of training time.

[Rubino]

The probing skills will come in handy in many ways - esp when it comes to tracking down other ships - for NPC or PvP.
I doubt they'll change the mechanic where NPC's will pod you   But it's always worth making sure your clone is current.

[Rubino]

lol - People have already come up with ways to game the wormhole system (the discussion thread on the dev-blog here: http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=982776&page=12#356) which has caused Whisper and Prism X to reconsider some of the mechanics about how wormholes operate.

On the good-news front - while it won't be in the March 10 expansion - they have hinted that a mobile manufacturing/exploration ship is on it's way. 

Update:  It appears that Cap ships will be able to enter W-Space - probably via entering the wormhole directly rather than a cyno.  From what I've read so far cynos will be allowed from W-Space to W-Space.  It raised an interesting issue about what happens should a Cap ship used a wormhole from W-Space to K-Space where the K-Space system was high-sec (http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=982776&page=21#620) - while the answer isn't clear - it appears that "against the law" means concord will detect a distrubance in the the force

[peo]

JC to w-space seems to be off the books from what I could understand at least.